Afghanistan’s most pressing need is cash, says key aid group

Girls play outside a mud brick house at a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul, Afghanistan (Petros Giannakouris/AP)

Afghanistan is facing a looming humanitarian crisis as aid organisations struggle to pay doctors, nurses and others on the ground because there is no way to transfer salaries to bank accounts there, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

ICRC president Peter Maurer’s comments echo those of the UN’s special representative for Afghanistan, who warned this week that the country is “on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe” and that its collapsing economy is heightening the risk of extremism.